Usually when I need to contact an organization, I bat my eyes lovingly and look to my hubby to make the phone transaction for me. Be it credit card company, bank company, or whatever, chances are it starts off with a mechanical system. My experience with such machines goes as such:
“Please press 1 for [insert gobbledygook]. Please press 2 for [insert gobbledygook]. Please press 3 for [insert gobbledygook].”
“Um, could you please repeat that?” I’ll ask. Really, I ask out loud, hoping someone out there will hear. If I stay on long enough, I might actually get a real person who will enunciate and repeat words.
But because I’m impatient and don’t like waiting, I turn to my poor hubby to make most of the transactions these days. And thus I turned to him when I needed to make a change in a hotel reservation. This telephone transaction introduced the new feature of having a voice-activated telephone machine instead of the usual punch-the-number machine. And, believe it or not, the machine had a hearing loss.
“Say ‘reservation’ for hotel reservation change, hotel reservation cancellation, or other transaction. Say ’services’ for questions about our policies. Say ‘billing’ for questions about your billing,” the machine said.
“Reservation,” my hubby said.
“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. Please speak again.”
“Reservation,” my hubby said louder.
“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. Please speak again.”
“RESERVATION!” my hubby screamed bloody murder into the receiver.
“You are now reviewing your reservation. Say ‘date’ for changes in reservation date….”
I will never again complain about the punch-the-number machines again.
This turned out pretty long, I think I’ll post it on my own blog
I don’t think anyone likes dealing with either system, but those voice activated ones are awful. So funny that it’s hard of hearing!
For calls like you’re talking about I always use the relay service. Once upon a time I had a real TTY for such calls but for the past 5+ years the websites and IM relays have been working great.
Normally I use http://ip-relay.com/ but there are many others. I can also send an IM to ATTRelay on AIM and that will connect me to make a call. There’s also Web-based Captel http://www.sprintcaptel.com
Captel is neat, they call you back and set up a 3-way call where you can talk and hear the person you’re calling and the operator can hear too and types captions that appear in your web browser. However, I prefer straight relay for customer service calls. I type the number, the caller assistant (CA, operator) calls it and types what the person I’m calling says, I type back and the CA reads it to them. Slow obviously, but accurate with minimal work on my part.
I prefer this for calling customer service centers because if the caller assistant doesn’t hear the person or doesn’t hear the recording they make it their job to figure out what was said before they share that information with you by typing it. With CapTel you get faster captions and you can hear and respond by voice, but you’re also responsible for asking for a repeat if the CA didn’t hear something.
I rarely have problems using relay with customer service reps of big companies. Using it for the doctor’s office locally doesn’t go so well, using it to make a hair appointment always results in them hanging up on me. CapTel would be better for those, but I usually ask my boyfriend to call. He also orders my lunch for me most days.
I have the CapTel for work. It helps traslate those hard-to-understand words, but sometimes the delay makes for awkward pauses.
“I’d like to *gibberity gibberish*” the speaker will say.
(Pause as Earplugs waits for the CapTel to catch up wth the words.)
“Um, hello? Are you there?” the speaker will ask.
It’s better than nothing, though! I need to explore using IP Relay more. It’s blocked at work, and I confess I’m really used to having my hubby tackle those tough phone calls — bad me! Thank you so much for the link!
[...] just read a post over at earplugs about dealing with phone calls that have the voice menu systems. A nuissance for deaf and [...]
I know what you mean about the phone. I haven’t used one for over 4 years. I use a TTY phone instead.
But I got a cochlear implant just 8 days ago, the switch on is in 13 days – so am hoping that maybe one day I’ll be able to hear on the phone again.
My blog if you are interested in reading about the implant, is http://www.katelocke.wordpress.com
I’ll keep my fingers triple-crossed that it works out for you! Thanks so much for providing me the link to your blog!
I thought I answered this before, but I guess not. When I get a menu system, either voice or press a number, if I have trouble with it, I hit “0″. Usually that brings me to a person to talk with to. Granted, that doesn’t always help, with the way some people talk, but at least gets me out of the machine system. If a voice system doesn’t accept pressing numbers, you can try saying “Help” or “Customer Service.” Of course some just route you to a voice menu restating all your options. (banging head into desk).